Cooking and Me

I don't know what my problem is of late but the whole cooking thing is not working out at all. It all started out a few days ago I thought I'd make a wonderful Indian dinner for my honey.

After slaving over a hot stove for hours (o.k it was those packets you put in boiling water but still) I decided to cook some poppadoms up . I put them in the microwave and of course the minute I did the screaming began. Lately any time I turn around its like a debate about the second amendment on Facebook. I ran to the kids room to untangle my sons hands from my daughter's throat when a thick black smoke began to fill the apartment.  I ran to the kitchen where I found the poppadoms were not only burned but were black.


My daughter turned to me and asked "Is that dinner" I nodded opening the windows to air out my fragrant meal and then she asked me with all sincerity, "is this my punishment?" 

I'm not really sure what she's being punished about but if she has to eat those papadums it must have been pretty awful.

You know cooking and I are not friends. However every once and while I get inspired and I do a big pot of chili or stew enough for about 4 meals and freeze it. The  problem is I never label anything and serving up a big plate of "Umm Brown Stuff" does not seem to please the masses. So now I just call everything "chili".

So last night I thawed one of the frozen unnamed brown things and discovered it was a far cry from chili . It was cholent!  I don't know if you've ever tried cholent but its this type of yucky stew Jews serve up on the Sabbath .

A few months ago my son really wanted to make it and as my Unlce Frank has a good recipe  I decided to make it with him.   After working on this thing for over four hours it ended up looking like this:
Yes it has eggs in the shell in it. It's supposed to. However
one of them burst so it had little pieces of egg shell all through it.

I thought I had gotten rid of it all the disastrous cholent. I swear I threw it out but that cholent is a survivor and there it was in all its glory all thawed out and in the pot.

So being the great mom I am I threw some hot sauce on it  and called it chili.
And they ate it...at least it wasn't the poppadoms